Another fine mess ... this time Tower
Hamlets |
PFI REBUILDING GRINDS TO A HALT AFTER BALLAST
UK GOES BUST
Its not just Southwark where privatisation
isn'r working. On Tuesday 14th October, there was a lot of scurrying around
between the 30 schools in our PFI refurbishment project. The reason being that
Ballast UK, the company to whom the £120m job had been sub-contracted,
had gone bust.
Apparently their Dutch parent company had
refused to underwrite any further work because it was not profitable enough. So
30 schools who had signed up for the PFI and were a few months into major
refits find that the work has stopped.
Scaffolding is being taken down, new furniture
being sent back to suppliers and there were even reports that mobile classrooms
were to be taken away (although the LEA have now agreed to foot the bill for
those.)
Ballast are not the main holder of the PFI
project. That is Babcock and Brown who are now looking for another firm to take
over the contract. The precise repercussions of the collapse of Ballast may not
be know for a while yet.
However, in the meantime some heads have
reported that it will be 6 months before any contract work restarts - leaving
schools with building sites on the premises but no builders. This could cause a
problems for site security. All in all last week was one in which those of us
who opposed PFI in Tower Hamlets were able to walk around with a smile on our
face and the words "I told you so" not far from our lips.
Alex Kenny (Tower Hamlets NUT)
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